Bread of Life:
a reflection on food, fellowship and faith
Adapted from the talk given by Guy Wilson at the Birstwith Show Service 27 July 2003
I largely put this service together when I was travelling in the United States a few weeks ago. I had my computer with me and would try to form ideas for today on it in the quiet moments that often seem to come, to me at least, more when I'm travelling than at any other time. I spent some days at the United Nations in New York. In the foyer there was a photographic exhibition about the most threatened peoples on earth the native or indigenous peoples. The photos were accompanied by quotations. One of them stuck in my mind. It was written by a North American Indian. I wasn't sure of it's relevance to today, but here it is
Everything on earth has a purpose, every disease a herb that can cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.
Well, if food and drink have a purpose it must be to keep us alive. Fitting then that Jesus used the symbols of simple staple food and drink to remind us of the new life he brought to the world. I like to think of them as the bread of strength and the wine of hope, strength from his body, hope from his life-blood.
But Jesus used these symbols not when he was talking to his disciples individually but when they were sat down to a meal together. And this togetherness is surely central to what he was asking us to do. Eat and drink together, remember me together, be sad and be glad together. This is where our Holy Communion, the central act of our faith comes from.
We all know how great and memorable and fun eating and drinking together can be. And how awful eating alone can sometimes be. Anyone who has been alone at Christmas must know that sometimes the bread and wine can taste sour when there's no one to share it with. Which is surely why the central act of our church is the sharing of a meal. Eating together is fun and it is memorable, which may be why we sometimes over-eat, we don't need that wonderful chocolaty dessert, not after garlic mushrooms and steak and chips, but, well…we're having fun and why not. There is a passage about the joy of eating in one of the most popular books of our time - no, not the bible, but the first book of Harry Potter. The first, literally magical, dinner of the new year at Hogwarts School is described. Empty dishes are suddenly piled with food of all sorts and Harry Potter tucks in with gusto.
"That does look good," said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak.
"Can't you - ?"
"I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years," said the ghost. "I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it."
One does miss it. Meals are things we remember for a long time with great pleasure. So in asking us to remember him when we eat and drink together Jesus was asking us to do something very simple and natural, but what a clever idea it was. He tells us to eat and drink together and remember him. And the sense of community and friendship that doing this brings about helped to bind the early Christians together when they met in secret to avoid persecution. And it binds us still to each other and to him. Of course, what he did can be set in a historical context and in a religious continuum. But as so ever he set everything on its head. Giving food to the Gods is one of the oldest of religious acts. In many religions the Gods are fed with the first and best of everything. What did God ask of Abraham? The sacrifice of his first born son, but he accepted a lamb instead, and after this many lambs were led to the |temple in Jerusalem to be sacrificed as a fitting meal for God. Giving up the best of what you have and are is what many religions ritualise in sacrifices or presentations to their Gods. In Japan the Shinto religion is based on ancestor worship. Through my work I have been privileged several times to attend the holiest event of the year at the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, the resting place of the first of the modern Shoguns who brought over 200 years of peace to Japan. Once a year they have a service at the inner mausoleum of the temple. There is court music and dancing, prayers and a great procession into the presence of their ancestor God taking him a wonderful meal - steaming plate of rice, wonderful fruits, beautiful skewered carp, exotic vegetables, enormous joints of meat. And when he has savoured them out they come again. It is, I think, in this context that we can begin to understand how revolutionary Christ was being in asking us to remember him with bread and wine. For he asked not for God to be fed by us with a sacrifice but for his sacrifice as and for God to be remembered by us in a meal - a complete turn-round of the idea of sacrifice. And he did not even ask us to do it in a special way with special food. The Last Supper was, after all, held on the Passover, when lamb was eaten. But he didn't say eat lamb or even turkey in memory of me. He asked us to use the most common food - bread, and in days when water could be dangerous, a very common drink - wine. Not the first and best, not the extraordinary for this extraordinary person but the ordinary, the normal, the every day. This must surely tell us where we should look for him, for help and for heaven.
But there is to me something else very important about our act of eating together. You remember the Mad Tea party in Alice in Wonderland? Well, do you remember what sort of reception Alice got when she arrived? Yes, despite it being a very big table with lots to eat and many spare spaces the Hare and the Hatter cried "No room, no room!" In other words, go away, it's all ours you're not welcome. Go away, it's all ours, you're not welcome. Alice could have been Mary looking for somewhere to rest and give birth, Alice could have been an asylum seeker looking for safety and a better life. Go away, it's all ours, you're not welcome. Now, of course the Alice stories are about a young person's initiation into the often not very pleasant ways of adults. The satire is sharp and intentional, the message clear. If the simplest, most common and most important thing we do is eat and drink, if in eating and drinking every day Jesus asked us to remember him and what he did for us, then how can we tell people they're not welcome when there are empty seats at our table?
We all eat, we all drink, we are all human. To deny what binds us together because there are things that separate us and to turn people away from our meal because of that, is to deny our humanity. To deny what binds us together is to deny the truth of Christ's teaching and life, to deny his very divinity. The living memory of a man who submitted to death so that everyone could live and be truly free, is Christ's legacy to the whole of the human race, whatever their beliefs, wherever they live, however they lead their lives. To deny this is surely to deny the simple but not easy message Christ was teaching at the Last Supper - in the simplest things we as humans do together we meet our God, and our destiny if only we have eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell and minds open to the truth. There is great strength and great hope in his message. But there is also a warning, a caveat, a signpost, call it what you will. So let us be humble in the ordinariness of our everyday so that we can find eternity. Let us look not far away but near at hand. We will find the mystery in the normal. Let us recognise the common bonds in ordinary life that bind us together, not those things that seem to separate. Let us be open to receive and to understand Christ through others. Let us not be too certain that we are right. Remember, as the great libertarian John Stuart Mill remarked 150 years ago - those who crucified Christ thought they were right. Let us rather enjoy the bread and the wine together in peace and joy and give thanks.
Therefore, perhaps the quote I began with does have relevance:
Everything on earth has a purpose, every disease a herb that can cure it, and every person a mission. This should be the Christian as well as the Indian theory of existence
Amen.